Why Europe is changing the rules for Kenyan farmers

For decades, Kenyan agricultural exports have relied on a familiar set of documents: physical phytosanitary certificates, PDF audit reports, and spreadsheet records compiled at the point of export. These have worked well enough for traditional customs processes based on periodic inspections and sample-based checks.

That system is ending. The European Union — Kenya's largest agricultural export destination — is rolling out a policy called the Digital Product Passport (DPP) under its Circular Economy Action Plan. The core idea: every imported product must carry a digital record that proves, continuously and verifiably, that it was produced responsibly.

For agricultural goods, this means proving three things above all else: that the farm is not in a deforested area, that pesticide use is within safe limits, and that the product was handled safely throughout its journey — including refrigeration during transport.

The first sectors affected are batteries, textiles, and electronics. But the EU's own roadmap explicitly lists agri-food as a next priority — particularly products with high deforestation risk, which includes avocados and coffee. Tea is not far behind.

The challenge for Kenya is structural. Most exporters, particularly cooperatives working with smallholder farmers, do not have the digital infrastructure to produce these records. Data is fragmented across different actors — the farm, the cooperative, the exporter, the freight forwarder — and none of it is connected in a way that produces a single, verifiable record per shipment.

TRACE is designed to close exactly this gap. It connects those fragments, locks the records so they cannot be altered, and produces a digital certificate that EU customs can verify independently.